Main menu

Whither the Audi A6? : With the A7 grabbing all of the headlines, we search for its sedan brother's purpose. In Death Valley.

January 4, 2012

1 of 8The Devil's Golf Course, just north of the lowest point in North America

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

2 of 8Somewhere off US 395.

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

3 of 8South of Mammoth Lakes.

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

4 of 8Creepy tree, gaping Teutonic maw.

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

5 of 8New day rising, Death Valley.

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

6 of 8And you expected chlorophyll here?

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

7 of 8Cessna 180, Mina, Nevada.

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

8 of 8Walker Lake, Nevada.

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

Claiming that an automobile has “soul” when in search of its ineffable je ne sais quoi is a bit of shorthand that's grown awfully tiresome in this day and age. It's been bandied about a fair bit when discussing Autoweek's Best of the Best/Car award winner, the Audi A7. And indeed, that car's packed to the rafters with things best explained using the sort of French that The Addams Family's Morticia used to drive Gomez 'round the bend.

For the eight of you out there who think “savoir faire” is a mall in northeastern Massachusetts or that “sangfroid” was a noted Korean psychiatrist, “je ne sais quoi” literally means, “I don't know what.” If one can't explain what, one must think harder.

After driving the A7, I couldn't figure out what raison d'être the Audi A6 could possibly have, despite the high marks we gave it during its time in Detroit. The long, svelte hatch uses the same underpinnings as the less expensive sedan but tops it with bodywork so delish that I couldn't fathom anybody not ponying up the extra dosh. The A6 left me with a true case of “I don't know what,” so I decided to think harder. I decided to drive it to Death Valley.

I had trouble with my initial perceptions of the A6. There was a sense of not-an-A7-ness to it. I wrested myself from that train of thought and started considering the car on its own merits somewhere between Lake Tahoe and Carson City, Nev. As I did, I found more and more to like about it. Which stands in stark relief to the utterly dismal experience I had with a 2011 Lincoln MKS EcoBoost. The sticker prices on the cars were within $3,000 of each other. They both have forced-induction V6s and all-wheel drive.

In contrast to the Audi, which I'd been punishing for not wearing a 1970s-Maserati suit, I'd kept trying to give the Lincoln chances. But every piece of the interior I touched felt like another disappointment. Every unsatisfying control input felt like a missed opportunity. The turbocharged engine in the Lincoln felt wholly uninspired. Yes, there was pace, but pace without zazz? That's one joyless moving violation, Alfonse. Meanwhile, the supercharged 3.0-liter engine in the Audi is an utter sweetheart. Icing? Audi's MMI is the best infotainment system in the game. Lincoln's glitchy derivative of MyFord Touch simply can't compete. Having checked out the warmed-over MKS at the Los Angeles auto show, my sense is that Audi still has nothing to worry about from Lincoln.

It's instructive, however, that General Motors name-checked the A6 when unveiling the Cadillac XTS at the same show. The reasons, in my mind are twofold: One, Audi's a huge player in China, which is one of GM's target markets for the new Caddy. In fact, Audi builds a long-wheelbase version of the previous-generation A6 solely for the Chinese market. Two, the A6 is currently the finest sedan in the segment. In fact, it's arguably the best executive sedan since the vaunted 1997-2003 BMW 5-series.

I'm not in love with Audi's smaller cars. Even the wonking TT RS seems like the sort of thing only meant to be purchased by blind-faith Audi RS fanboys. Anyone who appreciates driving would be better served by a Porsche Cayman S. But these new twins? They're something special, and while the A7 has the flash, the A6 quietly goes about its business, winning one over with sheer substance.

On the way home from Death Valley, I decided to take Ebbetts Pass back over the Sierra Nevadas. I'd come across the mountains nearly every other way over the decades, and because of the lack of snow this year, the top of California State Route 4 hadn't yet been closed for the season. Once I got up there and the road narrowed to 1 1/2 lanes with no center line, I realized just why CalTrans simply shuts down the road until the snow finally melts. Frozen puddles formed right at corner apexes in the 15-degree temperatures. The aerial view on the nav screen seemed to be flipping a 180 at every other turn. Ebbetts has a lot of turns.

Up around 8,700 feet, I was glad to have the Eaton TVS supercharger pumping air into the engine while accelerating out of tight, uphill corners. Despite my dissatisfaction with previous iterations of Audi's quattro system, the latest version won me over handily. Unless we're talking about the charmingly thunky, clunky mechanical tech of the 1980s models, the majority of the company's AWD systems have left the cars feeling--at best--like front-drivers that don't suffer from torque steer. At worst, the system comes across as strangely artificial means of keeping the car on the road. The latest generation, however, works with the fine chassis to deliver a feeling of overall balance and expertly-engineered wholeness.

Some cars drive smaller than they are. The A6 is not one of those cars, yet it drives much lighter than it is. There's a sprightliness in the manner it handles bumps and tight bends that suggests a much leaner vehicle. There was no getting around the car's length or width over Ebbetts, or in the descent from Father Crowley's Overlook down to the Panamint Valley floor. You might remember the overlook from the moment in Star Wars where Luke and Obi-Wan gaze out over Mos Eisley, the bit where Ben drops science on Young Skywalker regarding their impending visit to the wretched hive of scum and villainy below. Let's just say that the road to Mos Eisley is paved very steeply and contains many a switchback. Not wretched or scummy, per se, but villainous for sure.

While the A6 works in the tight stuff, it's not exactly in its element, and the transmission programming could stand to take a page out of Volkswagen stablemate Porsche's playbook. If anything, though, the A6 trumps the A7 in the rough; it seemed more compliant and sure-footed over choppy pavement.

Hairpin switchbacks aside, the A6 is a brilliant A-road cruiser. I didn't touch one scrap of interstate on the entire trip. It also handled Death Valley's dirt-and-gravel roads with nary a whimper and ate miles on U.S.-50, 395 and 95 with brio, gusto and numerous other foreign expressions of eagerness I'd jotted down on a napkin which I summarily forgot somewhere in Goldfield, Nev.

The A7 is capable of similar feats, of course, but for 10 grand more. And some folks, well, some folks would like to fly a little farther under the radar. Others simply prefer the five-passenger option. If I were dropping the ducats, I'd spend the extra cash for the hatch's swoopy styling and additional smidge of smooth-road goodness. But after more than a thousand miles in the A6, I can also completely understand why somebody would choose not to.

The answer to the A6's existential crux really starts with a question I like to believe the engineers in Ingolstadt asked themselves early in the car's development: How can we build the best mainline executive sedan possible at the given price point? They then methodically proceeded to do exactly that. It's simple, really. Sussing it out merely required 1,200 miles of hard thinking.